Starting Chemo in JAN 2007

Hi Ladies,
Robbinjaye, you look positively sultry in that wig. Must be fun to wear.
Lynn, commiseration on that head cold. I think I'm getting a UTI now that I'm at the end of all this. Looks like I'll be making a trip to Burlington this week after all.
Rebecca, it sounds like, from everyone's posts, that you posted a pic of your dress but it didn't show up on my screen. Hmmm, I'll keep watching, maybe it will turn up.
Caya and Viddie, I think the Herceptin is making me feel sluggish but that's the only symptom so far and could be the UTI. It truly is nothing compared to what we've been through.
I'm going to try to post a pic of the new baby separately. Amy is also still doing well, thanks for your concern everyone.
tlc, I know diddly about my upcoming radiation and it's now over three weeks since my final Taxol. I haven't even talked to the radiation onc yet. Supposedly the person who was supposed to set it up was out sick last week, yadayadayada. Isn't there a time window for rads after chemo? I'm getting a little nervous.
- Skye

Tina, where are you? I should come walk you all around the neighborhood, since I've lived a lotttttt longer than you have - I could keep all of you safe. That was such a cute comment for Paul to make. My laugh for the day!

Robbin, you are gorgeous in that wig, but I'm sort of glad you're not trying to wear it every day. It would be so hot this summer under all that hair.

Melia, glad you're good to go for #5 tomorrow, and glad your son's coming home - that will be a nice long visit. You've got the right idea though - let everybody pitch in and don't try to do everything yourself.

Rebecca, bet you're lovely in that brown...

Ok, a little story...hope I didn't tell this one before. I'll try to keep it short. 32 years ago, I lived in Houston briefly with my college roommate, who got me to move down here and then promptly married and moved back to Illinois. I stayed on here a while before moving back home to Kansas, and during that time I met a lot of people, mainly by hanging out with the manager of our apartment complex. I spent many an hour sitting in that office. Anyway, I eventually moved back home, and lost touch with most of my Houston friends. 17 years later, on Christmas night, I got a phone call from someone from that era - he had been sort of on the edge of my social circle, and I remembered him, but only barely. At the time, I was young and single, and he was newly married, so he wasn't on my radar. Evidently, he had come into the apartment office to rent an apartment, had seen me, and had one of those electrifying experiences that you can have and just never get over or forget. It scared him, so he avoided me like the plague while I lived there, for obvioius reasons, but he never forgot. Years later, he found himself divorced, tracked me down on the computer and called me.

I was single (still) and was painting my house at the time. He was planning to go on vacation and offered to come help me paint on the way to Colorado. He showed up at my house 15 years ago today, May 15, 1992. He also showed up 5 hours early, while I was in the shower, and it wasn't the most perfect beginning, but it was pretty much love at first sight. Three months later (to the day) we were married, I had quit my job and sold my house and moved back to Houston....and we both lived happily ever after, I guess. Thought I'd share, since this is the anniversary. He is still roughly 5 hours early for everything, and I am usually not ready...but we manage.

Hi,
Mel,
What a romantic story! That's really cool. Happy anniversary on your special new beginning with your dh. Thanks for sharing.
Skye,
She is a beautiful baby. And your mom is beautiful too.
I just got rid of an UTI with cipro. I called my oncologist and she ordered a urine sample. I just had to go to the lab. Maybe your doc can do the same and save you a trip into Burlington.
Robbin,
You look fabulous in your wig.
Tina,
Kids are so honest and cute. I miss that age.
Melia,
Good luck tomorrow and have fun with your son.
Lynn, I hope you are feeling better.
Rebecca,
I will cross my fingers. Good luck.
I was supposed to have radiation, but now I am having a bilateral mastectomy instead. That will also be a six week time period. I think time is really flying by. I cannot believe we started this journey in January and now it is already May. It has now been seven weeks since my last a/c and still no sign of hair growth. My oncologist said that the taxol/herceptin should not interfere with my hair growth. Me thinks she is wrong. What's happening with everyone's hair and how long since treatment? Time for another chart?? Maybe we could add it to the other chart at the end.

Good night,
Viddie

I made the changes to the spreadsheet. I have restricted access to it now because of the personal information. If you already sent me your email to become a collaborator you should STILL be able to access it, but I am not sure, so please try and then let me know if there is a problem. If you never registered for it....it is not too late! PM me your info and I will grant you access.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the sympathy about my cold. I’m so mad but am still optimistic that I will be feeling better this weekend.

RobbinJaye, you look Fabulous! I love that wig on you, doesn’t even look like a wig. I think you should wear it more!

Nandy, yes, she should get a 2nd opinion. I’m a bit confused about what you mean by surrounding tissue. Is it that they don’t know if there are clear margins? I think the procedure for that is pretty straightforward. If it’s that they can’t tell if it’s cancer or not, hmmmm..isn’t that what pathologists do? Definitely a 2nd opinion in order here.

Melia, glad your counts are good once again. I hope that you are gaining confidence that they will continue to be ok so you’re tx will not be delayed. Sounds like a wonderful family get together on Memorial Day weekend.

Tina, that is too funny about your son’s comment. Haha! My dh is funny like that too. He always walks next to the road al well. The funny thing is whenever we cross a street he reaches out to hold my hand. It’s like when I was 3 and had to hold my mommy’s hand crossing the street, but I let him do it anyway!

Skye, you should call your rad Onc to make sure they have you on the radar. I already had the consultation a few weeks ago and have the planning/set-up on the 29th which is 3 weeks after my last chemo. Cute baby, cute Mom!

Mel, I love your story! Have you called Oprah?

Viddie, I’m sorry to hear your hair has not starting growing yet. At about my 5th tx (out of 6), my hair started growing in different. Instead of the sparse see through like nothing hairs, I was growing thick salt/pepper regular feeling hair. DH had been shaving my head prior to that but I said this time it was different. Sure enough, I now have a full head of hair about ¼ inch long. Hair is also growing everywhere else as well. I was sure I would lose it after my last tx but Onc said I most likely will not lose it. He mentioned the words ‘initial assault’, so that must mean the hair follicles take a beating in the beginning but can recover later during treatment.

Rebecca, nursing brought you from a D to and A? Wow! I only nursed my third child and think my boobs got bigger because of it. How different we all are. I’m sure your breast will be all settled in by the time of the wedding. You will be gorgeous!

Hugs,
Lynn

Hi Ladies,
Rebecca, I must have breezed right past that link to the dress. It is so simple and elegant, I love it. Not bridesmaidy at all!
Mel, that is a wonderful "how I met dh" tale. I met mine in 4-H club when we were 10 years old and he stood in front of me in the choir. We didn't date til the end of high school but got married 3 years later. 35th anniversary this August.
I'll tell my mom you all thought she was cute. It will make her day. I'm not a big fan of renaming babies either, especially unspellable names, but this niece has always been the indecisive type. Hopefully she'll settle on one soon.

Viddie my hair is like yours, staying in the stubble stage. Leg hair not growing either. I massage my scalp and give it encouraging messages but so far it's lying low. I imagine our follicles are traumatized and need to recover yet.

Lynn, I'd love to call the rads onc but I don't know who it is yet. They were checking to see which one was a preferred provider with my insurance, but I thought I was supposed to start radiation next week and that hardly seems possible now. It rather upsets me.

Caya, that is so interesting about the chemopause drying up the urethra. My UTI symptoms sound like yours. I'll probably get it checked out anyway but it's good to know about that possibility.

Hope you're all getting some great late spring weather today - Skye

good morning gals
looks like everyone is getting better and onto other things besides the chemo .Time has flown by , our first long weekend of the summer season is coming up . We usually go camping but not this year we are doing gardening and hanging around the city while the hyways get jammed with people going to their cottages.
I am getting ready for rads that start next Friday getting 33 treatments with a few " boosts " they say the boosts are good for a "younger" womans boobs ...... me being just 50 i am younger ?? . My radiologist is very nice and very young ...... he will be following my progress throughout rads and checking me every week .
Robin Jaye ...... love the wig you look like Lucy lawless in "Zena " princess warrior .
Skye ; congrats cute baby
Rebecca i am sure you would look great in anything we are all going to have a survivor glow soon just have to get those chemicals outta us .....
Caya : hope you are feeling better each day , with the cooler weather maybe the flashes will not be so hot
viddie : my hair is growing in salt and pepper seems to get longer each day .. but i can still see me scalp , no sign of eyelashes or eyebrows yet still look a little gooky
I hope that joni is doing ok , if you are reading posts joni we are here for ya ....
If I missed anyone hi there !!!!! our leaves are out on the trees now summer is not long off ....
Had a little dizzy spell yesterday in the yard , picking up dog poo it was hot and i had eaten but all of a sudden wham ... my head was spinnin around and around .... have never fainted in my life but felt like i might have .... Anyones else 's head get a little spinny sometimes , i thought i would have been ok by now but guess not ...... takes a long time for the dope to get through ya ......
Today i slept in a just got up , wanna feel like me again , jumpin at the chance but me body is still sayin wait a bit.. so today is puter day and lounge around day .... still getting pains in my muscles and joints form the taxotere and my fingers tips are numb and tingling . been over 3 weeks from last chemo ..... one day at a time they say .......... onward ladies

Tina - deal! I'll be right up, and if you make me walk, I promise to walk on the outside.

Skye, I'd definitely be on the phone to my oncologist at least, to get something moving with your rads. Someone has to know something, and it is worrisome that you have maybe fallen through the cracks.

Rebecca, I don't imagine you missed those D-cups on your tiny little frame, did you? I can't understand why all the younger girls who come in for breast augmentation now are asking for D's or DD's - is it some cultural thing going on, or is it that the PS's are pushing them to go larger because they (the PS) like it? We see a lot of that where I work, and some of those little girls almost fall over frontwards the first time they get up. I would think they would try to guide them to a more proportional look. Just one of my pet peeves. But, maybe it's really what the girls want, I don't know.

I can get into the spreadsheet, Rebecca, and filled in the requested data. The way it is set up my AIM address doesn't all show - is there a way to fix that?

Not much hair (if any) growing on this body! My head is still shiny, with the occasional hair here and there, but it doesn't seem to be filling in at all, so I count that as nothing. No leg hair, no arm hair (or underarm), no public hair, nothing. I figure it'll start coming back any time. I'm four weeks out now, but remember, everything seemed to hit me right at the end. I'm not on Herceptin, by the way.

Caya, that's interesting, and probably very true, about the UTI's being due to everything just drying up so suddenly and completely. I think I've experienced the same thing - UTI's that weren't really infections, I mean. So what are we supposed to do about them - just wait until our bodies adjust?

Lynn, hope you're feeling better today. And no, we haven't called Oprah. Neither of us are very photogenic!

Glad everybody liked my "anniversary of the day we met" story. Our wedding anniversary is August 15, but somehow May 15 always seems like the more important day. We really did know the very first day. The wedding was pretty magical and unusual too - won't bore you with all the details, but the reception was OUTSIDE in KANSAS in AUGUST and it was not windy or 110 degrees - just perfect spring weather. That's a miracle. It was at the home of friends, who have beautiful property sloping down to the river in back. During the actual wedding, the most interesting things that happened were a) the judge who married us cried through the whole ceremony (she was a friend of mine), and b) my 3 year old nephew made pig noises through the whole ceremony. Those are the kinds of things that you remember more fondly than how beautiful the flowers were, or whatever....or at least I'm that way. Pig noises....:D

Shorti, I get the same kind of light headed feeling, like I might pass out, from time to time. Haven't actually done it yet, but I know what you mean, for sure. I'm also longing to just wake up one way and feel normal, so I can do all the things I want to do. I'm learning patience, don't know about you. There are things I've wanted to do for weeks, that I still haven't felt up to doing. So.....I make lists.

Everybody have a great Wednesday. Add my friend Joyce to your prayers, please. She is having her bilateral mastectomy and DIEP tomorrow. I was her preop nurse and we have been best friends ever since. I hooked her up with the same surgeons I'm using, so we are really going through this together. She starts chemo in June.

mel-quite right I did not miss those D cups...it was very hard for me to be so endowed and be so small. They were pretty saggy even in my 20's. Although I wound up small after my kids, they were VERY saggy...more like skin bags than anything else (not a pretty sight). I have no clue why anyone would want to be so out of proportion...I may be nervous about my boob-to-come, but I did not ask for enormous knockers, and the PS is trying to stay in proportion to my frame. i am sure it will look fine in the end.

Oh, and Mel your wedding sounds like the one that I wished I had! I wound up very traditional, but I wanted to do it outside in the sunshine with the grass between my toes, but it was not to be. Turned out ok, though....we will be married 11 years this June.

Looks like some elves were working on the spreadsheet! Mel, I adjusted the column width so your entire screen name shows for the AIM. For those of you who do not know what this is...AOL instant messenger is a free bit of software that you can use to chat in real time with people over the computer. I use it a lot to talk with friends, and particularly with my husband during the day. I thought that if we all exchanged info we could then chat real time instead of waiting for posts to appear. If you want the software you can get it here:

http://www.aim.com/

No, Shorti, I didn't mean PUBLIC hair! I can't believe I wrote that - I seem to be making a lot of errors of that type lately. Good thing I have the chemobrain excuse, but I'm going to have to edit more carefully. Thanks for pointing it out - it's good to keep me humble.

I’m coming out of the fog from my LAST chemo, but still feel like dirt. I’ve slept almost constantly since Friday. I don’t even remember Mother’s Day. It will take me days to read all of the posts I missed!

Joni – your stage IV news totally stinks, but this is not over. I have a great friend here in town that has had bc twice. Stage IV the second time. Docs gave her weeks, or a couple of months at the most. They told her to get her will in order and contact hospice. She did that and then went on vacation to Europe with her husband and son. She had mets in her liver, hip, and spine. She’s still here more than two years later and has only one tiny liver met left. She has a great story about the day her husband sat her down for a serious talk – they had to face the fact that she was going to live and stop spending all of their money on vacations! This news is horrible, but there is hope! Sending you big, big hugs!!!!

Jan resurfaces! Welcome back. Glad you are feeling better. You knew it'd take you a while.

Love your story about your friend w/mets. That's uplifting.

I'm not sure I will ever come out of the chemo fog. I go to work and by 2:00 I am so tired and achy. I hate it! And I noticed the more active I am the more I have hot flashes. Weird.
Last night I got kind of scared, I was having really bad pains all down my right side of my chest and today it feel quite sensitive. I see Onc. Friday before taxol number 13! That's going to be a scary treatment, HA!
Well, that was weird I just out of the blue got sick and lost my dinner, now I have a terrible sore throat. My DH wants me to see the Dr. before Friday but I think I can hang on til then. Oh brother if it's not one thing.....

Viddie
The symptoms of burning and pain when peeing are symptoms of a UTI, but can also be just atrophy (drying out) of the urethra/bladder lining - I think the way your onc. described it as a "wimpy" infection is basically what my onc. meant - because the bacterial culture they grew from my urine sample for about 48 hours came back negative, not a true, severe UTI - and I've had those, bloody urine etc. The CIPRO helped me too, but I hope this is it. I drink cranberry juice, and when not on chemo I take cranberry juice supplements, but my onc. nixed them for now...
Nancy - I hope you feel better and agree with Viddie to at least call the dr. - I know, I know, it's enough already...
Mary, so sorry about your BIL. I know what you mean about the stress levels, we certainly have had enough stress the last few months, but what can you do? (Ativan is great at times like these)
Jan, glad you are back from the chemo fog. I took about 5 days this time - at least we know we're done with chemo.
I'm getting a small mouth sore at the corner of my mouth again, like I did from my first Taxotere infusion - just when you think you're out of the woods, chemo s/es come back to haunt us - Oy!!
good night ladies
caya

Quote:

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Rebecca, that's a nice dress - do you want to find my a mother of the groom dress in two years? That style would look good on me - but I don't know about the cleavage. I can't figure out the spreadsheet and logging in - want to give me any hints. I do have an AIM account. And what is a deodrant stone? Where do you get those?

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Mary that is a lot of questions! I wish I could claim credit for finding the dress myself, but my sister did most of the work. On the other hand I would help you any day of the week just say when!

Here is a link to the deodorant that I use:
http://www.thecrystal.com/product.cfm/id/1/scid/a/submit_thumb/2

I have used it for years, and it is awesome. It is the only thing that keeps me smelling sweet and at the same time does not give me a horrible rash.

Regarding the spreadsheet, I am not sure what is going on specifically with you logging in. You need to be listed as a collaborator in order ot view it now (I restricted access since we are now adding personal info). If you did not send me your email address you need to do so...otherwise just log in to your google account and you should be able to see it.

Viddie: The spreadsheet has several pages that you can tab through. I put the new one up front, but the old one is still there...look at the bottom of the grid towards the left corner. Click on the link that says "Chemo stats" and the original page will come back.

Viddie, I also do not know why my PS would make me bigger than I want other than the fact that if he had reconstructed me at the size I was at Dx it would have looked terrible and very fake. This issue of size has been an ongoing anxiety for me, particularly since right now I look huge and scary on my mastectomy side because of the expander. I am sure it will be fine in the end. I have expressed my fears in the Drs office several times and been reassured. It really does stink, though....it is now two days since my last expansion, and I am still in a lot of pain from it. Thank goodness I do not have to do THAT again. I will be stable now until August when I have my surgery.

Caya Yay on the lifting fog, and YECK on the mouth sore.

Nancy, that sounds nasty. You should call your Dr ASAP. I know it sucks to go to the Dr more than you think you have to, but better safe than sorry. Keep us posted.

Good morning to the rest of you ladies!